


I See Your Face Across the Sea

by basketofnovas (slashmarks)



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: F/F, Pining, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-24 01:38:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8351263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/pseuds/basketofnovas
Summary: After Miranda, Kaylee leaves the ship -- and finds Inara.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amyfortuna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [I See Your Face Across the Sea](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8761261) by [Synant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synant/pseuds/Synant)



> To my recipient - I hope you enjoy the fic.
> 
> Fic includes references to the canonical deaths in the movie, but nothing particularly detailed.

After Miranda, Kaylee leaves the ship.

It takes her near six months to make the decision, but the fact is, without Inara she can't stay anymore. She made it through those months before on calls and messages and the thought that it wouldn't last forever, that Inara would be back because Inara loved Mal--

Or loved _her_ \--

But now it's clear as day that Inara's gone, really gone, back to a Companion House and away from  _Serenity_ for good, and that she has no intention of changing her mind.

Kaylee honestly can't blame her, because the last few months have given her a good view of how irritating the captain can be, and now that River needs less taking care of Simon worries even  _more_ , and Kaylee's never been close with Zoe or Jayne, and she doesn't have Wash to talk to anymore, either.

River's nice, she's the only friend Kaylee really has lately, but nobody can live with just one friend. Especially not Kaylee.

And sometimes it seems like River isn't there either. She'll stare at the wall for hours or dance in the cargo bay for the whole day, something halfway between ballet and fighting. It's not like Kaylee  _blames_ her, it's not River's fault and it's not her job to wait on Kaylee, but on those days River is nowhere she can be reached and then there's no one to talk to at all.

Except for  _Serenity,_ of course. But the thing about  _Serenity_ is, she listens real nice, and the thump and hum of the engines is like a heartbeat in an immense chest when Kaylee puts her ear to them on the engine room floor at night, and it's  _almost_ like having company in her bed, but  _Serenity_ never talks back.

So she leaves the ship.

She cries when she decides to do it and she cries when she tells Mal and she cries most of the night, the last one before they dock at Kaylee's last stop. She spends that night in the engine room on the floor and barely sleeps, talking to  _Serenity,_ telling her she'll be back one day at least to visit, and maybe permanently if she can just get some damn company. 

She spends the morning telling people about mechanics. River sits beside her in the engine room, serious and quiet, listening as Kaylee recites the vital reference volumes and the idiosyncrasies of  _Serenity_ that can't be found in them. Zoe goes over the most common console problems with her. She even ambushes Jayne and Simon, individually, because people have got to be as hard as ships so Simon should be able to do  _something_ , and Jayne can maintain his guns and some of them are pretty fancy. 

The only person she doesn't talk to is the captain. He knows enough about  _Serenity,_ probably, been with her longer than Kaylee, and anyway if she talks to him he'll go back to trying to convince her to stay.

She appreciates it. Really. He gave her a job and a ticket off planet and steady work for years and fair pay, and now she's leaving he's given her a reference letter that glows like the sun. (Truthfully she's pretty sure he got Zoe to write most of it, but it's the captain's signature on the bottom that makes it count). That reference letter, her experience and her skill, Kaylee won't have any problem finding work elsewhere.

She hopes.

Anyway she's telling Simon about welding and patchwork and the parts of the ship that've already been repaired so many times they need to be checked every so often, and Simon is nodding periodically with some emotion in his face she won't let herself see, when River ducks around the door of the infirmary and says, “Time to go, Kaylee.”

“It's that late?” Simon says, but Kaylee checks the time and yeah, Mal planned to leave ten minutes ago. He landed on this planet just for Kaylee, a moon full of shipyards where she should be able to get a job easy and find another crew in need of a good mechanic sooner or later if she wants, or at least pay for passage off world.

Another twenty minutes of frantic goodbyes and last minute arrangements and Kaylee is standing on the docks, bag over her shoulder, watching  _Serenity_ take off. Without her.

 

For all it was thoughts of Inara that got her to leave the ship, Kaylee hardly thinks about her for another six months.

She's too busy, for one thing. She tries out working at one of the shipyards first – and she does get the job real easy – but it's boring, tell the truth; routine repairs, easily done, all her materials new or new-ish and plentifully supplied. She'd gotten used to scrambling on  _Serenity,_ trying to patch her up with spit and hair, just about. And she's really too skilled for the sort of stuff they hired her for. Her supervisor isn't too surprised when she quits after a month, just says she's sorry to see Kaylee go.

She thinks about trying another job with more complicated repairs – with the reference from the temporary job plus Mal's, she could get one – but they're not so plentiful and anyway she doesn't really want to work for someone else. She got used to having her time to herself unless there was a crisis on  _Serenity_ .

So Kaylee sets up on her own instead. With her take from the last couple jobs on  _Serenity_ and what she saved from her last job, she can just about afford the first month's rent on a storefront and parts for the most frequent repairs.

That plus a reputation will put her in business, and she gets the reputation by working cheap and fast and well. The financial situation is a little shaky for a few months starting out, since most people go to the big shipyards, but Kaylee gets some jobs – people her supervisor refers to her when their problems are too tricky or their vessels are too obscure for the standardized training; people who know Mal and Zoe once she tells them she's in business over the cortex; people who just want the cheapest mechanic – and she sleeps in the shop so she doesn't have to pay rent and utilities on another room.

It's numbers that keep her awake at night: income and expenses and profit margins, median prices and customer numbers and the best deals on parts. She falls asleep smelling engine grease and wakes up reaching for her tools, and if in between she sometimes dreams about soft, curly black hair and the smell of incense, she doesn't dwell on it much.

Eventually she gets a lucky break; some almost out of date vessel from a huge shipping company, just about falling apart when it lands, gets referred to her. She gets them back into flying shape in two days, working day and night, so fascinated by the innards of an engine she's only read about in books that she doesn't mind not sleeping. The captain pays her a bonus, and then he puts her name and address in the company's list of recommended shops.

Kaylee suddenly has so much business she can't think. She makes a decent profit margin over her expenses for the first time that month and still has to turn people down because of her schedule, so she raises her prices. The next month she raises them again and rents a docking bay of her own so her customers can bring their ships to her instead of her going to them. She's making enough money to save and maybe even expand; after another month she hires a girl to sit at the desk and talk to customers while Kaylee fixes the ships and checks out their inventory.

The girl's a native of the moon, sixteen and barely on her own and in love with ships. Kaylee spends their time in between customers teaching her mechanics, tells her if she stays on and learns well enough Kaylee will take her on as a partner. She's pretty sure she will.

It's a good thing they get along pretty well, because Kaylee doesn't have time to talk to much of anyone else unless they're giving her a rundown on the problems with their ship. She used to go out to the bars on Saturday nights and sometimes bring company home, but she doesn't have time anymore, she has a student and so much work they have to clean the shop and check inventory on the one day they're closed.

Maybe that's why she starts thinking about Inara again; same as before, loneliness. She talks to the crew every couple of weeks, she knows that Mal's hired a new mechanic who's not half as good as her but might train up to be decent, and Zoe's stopped having nightmares about Wash finally, and River's started going out on jobs regularly now and made Jayne mad by shooting better than him more than half the time. 

But she hasn't talked to Inara since she left; Kaylee doesn't know if Inara gets along with the other Companions at her House, if she's getting enough clients, if there's anyone she's sweet on. She could look up her contact info on the cortex, probably should, but she's been out of contact so long it feels like it would be embarrassing.

Kaylee does think about her at night, though, and if she's only got her vibrator for physical company she's got her thoughts of Inara for her mind. There are hundreds of hours of memory stored up in her brain, Inara brushing her hair and washing her hands and dressing Kaylee up in her clothes. The feathery touches of her fingertips on Kaylee's palm, turning it over, and the cool henna paste she drew into spirals and flower blossoms on the soft skin of Kaylee's wrists...

It's not really enough, but it's something to think about when Kaylee hasn't had more touch than a few hugs in excitement at a good job found or completed in months.

Her prices go up again, and people are looking to hire her for more expensive stuff anyway, complicated repairs and replacements and upgrades. Without thinking about why, Kaylee starts focusing more on the expensive stuff, saving up what she doesn't have to spend right away. She tells herself that her student should get practice with this stuff now, while Kaylee's here.

 

Kaylee's a pretty rich woman for a mechanic in the outer worlds when her student turns eighteen. She sells half the shop to her and gives her the other half as a surprise birthday gift. The months have piled up to reach three years, and it's time to go.

She books passage to the world Inara's House is on. It's supposed to be beautiful – she reads guidebooks about it in the passenger's cabin, telling herself she could use a vacation; the world is lush and beautiful, one of the most perfect terraforming outcomes, and it hasn't been taken back apart like some of the Core worlds. She'll stop by and see Inara if she's not busy. Maybe.

Maybe...

Impulsively, Kaylee looks Inara up on the cortex and finds out she can just about afford an hour or two without doing herself serious financial damage. It's a hell of a thing to spend what she made off half the shop, and it's not exactly polite to hire a Companion you know, she vaguely understands--

Oh, to hell with it. It's not like Inara has to accept. She's not going to be caught by surprise by Kaylee showing up at her door if she says yes. She records a video message real fast, doesn't let herself think about it too hard, although she does take a shower and put on her nicest shirt first.

After she lies on her bunk in near agony, sure that she said something absolutely idiotic and probably there was engine grease on her face and Inara is going to  _hate_ her, why couldn't she just send a wave like a normal person catching up with an old friend? At least, Kaylee tells herself, she won't have to hear about it, Inara will just – tick a box or something and reject her and Kaylee can go hide on the other side of the system and never tell the crew. She'll board another ship straight away when she gets to the moon, go see the Core with the money before she takes another job.

It's three days until they dock, and two days of agony before Kaylee hears back. It's not in the form of a response to the offer; it's a private wave.

And it's maybe a good thing that Kaylee's drowsing in her bunk when the cortex goes off, because she doesn't have time to worry about it. She just drags herself out of the bunk, not even straightening her skewed shirt, checks the call has her name as the recipient and not some previous resident of the passenger bunk, and hits accept before she reads the caller name.

“Kaylee, it's good to see you,” Inara says, and Kaylee sits back down on her bunk with a muffled groan.

Inara is sitting at a desk, and Kaylee can see enough of the chair to know it's made of real wood or a damn good imitation. There's a small fountain in the room behind Inara, and silk hangings on the walls, and all of this is stuff Kaylee will remember later distantly because she hasn't seen Inara in real time in  _years_ and Inara is somehow even more beautiful than Kaylee remembered, so beautiful that there's a lump in her throat and she can't breathe, let alone talk or stop staring.

Inara's hair is half up, a spray of curls coming down around her shoulders, and her dress is a beautiful, lush blue like the ocean, and Kaylee is horrifically conscious that her hair is a mess and her shirt's on crooked and she's got engine grease under her nails because the ship's mechanic asked her to take a look at his work earlier.

At least Inara can't see her nails if Kaylee doesn't show her by bringing them up. Kaylee sits on her hands to make sure.

“I received your message,” Inara says with a little twitch of her lips.

“Oh god,” Kaylee says, throat unblocked, “I am _so sorry,_ Inara, I don't know what I was thinking--”

Maybe she can claim she was drunk?

“On the contrary, Kaylee, I was glad to hear that you've done so well for yourself. Zoe mentioned that you'd left _Serenity_ and gone into business last time we spoke, but she didn't have any more specific news.”

“Oh,” Kaylee croaks. “So you're not – offended...”

“Of course not,” Inara says, “But I do prefer not to mix business with personal relationships.”

It's a scolding, Kaylee's not a fool, but Inara says it so nicely, with a smile that implies maybe regretting that and a soft look in her eyes, that Kaylee doesn't feel too stung. And the conversation moves on too fast for her to pity herself; she tells Inara about her business and her student and the ship she's on right now, which is another beautiful old Firefly from a different year than  _Serenity,_ and Inara tells her in turn about the House and the Companions and her favorite places to eat and visit in the city Kaylee's docking in. 

They make plans to meet on an evening Inara doesn't see clients, and Kaylee hangs up feeling more happy than sad.

She tries not to daydream about Inara that night, all too aware she'll soon be looking Inara in the eye over tea, but it's hard. It's become a habit on all those lonely nights, thinking about silk catching on the calluses of her hands and the smell of Inara's favorite perfume.

The visit is nice – more than nice, it's amazing, it's a relief and a revelation to see an actual friend. They eat dinner in Inara's rooms in the House; rice mixed with pine nuts and rice noodles in broth and grilled meat with peppers, a dish of cooked wheat and greens and crescent-shaped, perfectly arrayed little dumplings, and at least five other things with delicate green tea after. It's the kind of food only the rich eat, at least in space, and it feeds more than her body. Kaylee will have the meal to think about for months after when she's stuck living off synthesized crap.

After, they walk around the lake on a wooden pathway lit by paper lanterns. There are fireflies on the edge of the water, dancing in strange, beautiful patterns. Kaylee is so, so glad she came to see Inara after all; she could have found the trail herself and bought one really good meal, but she couldn't have just plucked conversation from the air.

They're halfway around the lake, and Inara catches her hand loosely. Looking out at the water, she says, “Did you know, the light is their courtship?”

“I didn't,” Kaylee says, delighted by the image; one firefly doing a dance of light for another, saying, look at me! Pick me!

“It's beautiful, isn't it?” Inara says, stopping at the railing to stare down.

“Yeah,” Kaylee says softly. ”Real pretty.”

“I hope I didn't hurt your feelings by rejecting your offer,” Inara says.

“Of course not,” Kaylee says, and by now it's mostly true. “I should've known better.”

“As I said,” Inara says softly, “It's best not to mix transactional relationships with more lasting emotions...”

Kaylee almost misses her meaning. The whole evening seems too good to be true, and the darkness and the flickering light of the lamps and the fireflies lends a dreamy feel to the walk. She could have imagined it.

“You mean,” she says, slowly.

“I do,” Inara tells her. Her soft, uncallused fingers brush Kaylee's palm. “Stay with me, tonight?”

“Oh,” Kaylee says softly. “Oh, yeah, tonight and any night you'll have me.”

Inara laughs. “I hope you were prepared for a long stay in that case.”

“There's nowhere I've got to be,” Kaylee says. “Indefinitely.”

Inara's fingers are just as soft on her face when she tilts Kaylee's head up. The kiss is slow, and sweet, and better than anything Kaylee has ever imagined.

Even better is the promise it implies – that Kaylee won't be alone.

 


End file.
